


soft georgia summer

by cosmicpoet



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alcohol, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, before the Enterprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 17:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14676350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Leonard and Jim sit, laden with the heat of the night, talking about trust.





	soft georgia summer

Jim’s hand, laced with the sweat of a blistering Georgia summer, rests on Leonard’s shoulder. The night air is thick with heat and words of love that have been taken already to the non-existent wind; sitting outside on deckchairs does nothing for them, they’re still overly hot, but it doesn’t matter because the world, in all its heat and glory, was built for lovers like this.

Empty beer bottles and half-full glasses of whiskey decorate this modern portrait of a southern paradise – barefoot and heat-heavy, Jim and Leonard care not for the impressions of other people, nor the oppression of the weather, they loosely and clumsily embrace. Leonard’s hands are rough, have been all his life, and Jim’s soft fingertips trace beauty onto all the imperfections that Leonard used to be so hung upon. _Used to be…_ perhaps, Leonard thinks, that is a lie.

When they kiss, it’s not as if fireflies burst from the shadows of an ethereal forest, but Leonard swears that he sees something other than this, born out of simple beauty; the night sky is the same, yet somehow more animated to his eyes. They look up at the stars together, hours spent with promises that they’ll both get there one day, on one of those big starships.

But they are young, and they are in love, and the world is not known for being kind. Even nights like this took sacrifice, the relationship with Leonard’s parents, unsupportive and callous. However, Leonard needs only to think of Jim’s face, early in the morning sunlight, and he realises that certain things are worth losing your parents for…certain things are even worth dying for.

Moonlight differs from sunlight in the way it lights up Jim’s cheekbones – here, he looks pale, but not deathly. Almost as if, Leonard thinks, he has become the moon itself, a being born in the coolness of space, languishing outside in a Georgia summer with Leonard. Is he dragging Jim back to Earth?

No, Jim has reassured him otherwise, and his trust in his lover usurps his self-consciousness that still bites into him sometimes. It writes itself all over his face, dreadful and horrific, manifesting in wrinkles and false smiles – when Leonard looks in the mirror, he sees hatred, and he wants to bloody his hands and smash it all up. But he’s a doctor, or at least training to be one, and he’d only have to patch himself up at the end – because Jim, as loud and beautiful and brash and so _wonderfully human_ as he is, would solve cuts and bruises with kisses and whiskey.

Ah, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

“Bones,” he hears Jim’s gruff voice, thick with lack of sleep and the remnants of whiskey; he moves his lips so lightly…Leonard knows that Jim can read him like a book. But he’s not worth reading, he thinks.

“Yeah, darlin’?”

“What’s got you so down?”

“Nothin’. I’m just thinkin’.”

“C’mon, you can tell me! I’d know that face anywhere. You’re feeling down.”

 _Anywhere._ Jim would know Bones _anywhere._ Even in the darkness of space? Truthfully, Leonard is unsure of whether he exactly _wants_ to go into space – fly up there and risk dying, all the while to ache for another endless Georgia summer? But it’s not even a question any more, he will follow Jim anywhere, in any life. Their destinies are intertwined.

“It’s really nothin’.”

“Sure it is, Bones,” Jim says, shifting out of his chair and sitting directly onto Leonard’s lap. He looks at him, fake-pouting and looking upwards as if to goad Leonard into confessing his sadness.

But Leonard has tricks up his sleeve.

He leans down and kisses Jim, holding his back whilst Jim falls into him, and they remain there – awkwardly, two bodies on one chair, idolising the night and worshipping each other. Whilst Leonard’s mind wanders, he wonders if Jim’s eyes are open, looking up at the stars instead of down at him, but he needs to have faith. No, that’s what his parents would say, and then they’d talk about God.

He needs to have _trust._ Yeah, that’s right. Trust in a boy with sandy hair and soft hands, holding his cheeks whilst he kisses.

Leonard almost imagines that he can taste the girls in the bars that Jim spent nights with, back when Leonard was away studying, and neither of them had confessed yet. But Jim wouldn’t do that, not to _him,_ right? He wouldn’t just eat him up and get his hands into his insides and then… _leave him._ Jim is kind. Jim is gentle, holding Leonard’s hand and walking through fields with him and always giving him the bigger half of whatever they share and pouring his whiskey for him and…

Jim is wonderful.

The kind of boy Leonard really, _really_ wouldn’t mind dying for.

Soft, but fleeting, Jim pulls away from the kiss to look Leonard in the eyes.

“You’re thinking about _before,_ aren’t you? Your parents, or before you and I realised we were destined to be together?”

Leonard nods, his head almost mechanical.

“I promise, darling, it’s over. You don’t have to see your parents any more, and you know what I was…what I am…like. I’ve always got something to prove. Bones, you know I had to live up to my dad, had to become the best, and it was just…I did a lot of stupid stuff, and broke a lot of fragile hearts. But not you. Never you.”

“I don’t…I mean…it’s not that I don’t trust you. I just don’t trust _myself_ to be good enough,” Leonard says.

Jim lifts the glass of whiskey to Leonard’s lips, baptising him into the promise of self-belief. As if receiving the sacrament of communion, Leonard drinks; afterwards, Jim rests his head on Leonard’s chest, and they collectively sigh.

“You are always enough for me,” Jim says, “I never, not once, wanted more.”

“But you could _have_ more,” Leonard replies, his voice soft against the night air, “why me?”

“Because I don’t want anything but you. And imagine I did, Bones, imagine I left you. I’d be kissing someone else’s lips, and they just wouldn’t taste like bourbon, and their hands wouldn’t be calloused, and they wouldn’t have the exact amount of stubble that you have. And the whole time…the _whole time,_ I’d be imagining they were you.”

“You really would?”

“On my life.”

“Hm,” Leonard says, playing with Jim’s hair, “I trust you.”

“’Course you do,” Jim replies, “’cause I’m gonna be captain of a starship one day, and I’m gonna need my right-hand man right there with me.”

“Alright, darlin’.”

He thinks of flying, but he doesn’t think of falling. Instead, he imagines dying, becoming one with the stars, so that Jim will look at him this way forever.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been so long since mckirk has been in my life I feel like I'm in 2015 again and I love it!! Please comment if you liked this!!


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